Kerry Pither

After 30 years of authoritarian rule, the people of Egypt are “breaking through the fear barrier”. That’s how one Egyptian Canadian being interviewed on the CBC described the incredible courage being shown on the streets of Egypt these days. Well put.

I for one am haunted by what I know of Egypt’s security services, and what they do to those who dare to speak out. I can only imagine the horror of how Mubarak’s revenge is being meted out on those detained in the past few days. So I’m spending a little time thinking about them, and hoping that the very real possibility of change is somehow helping them endure.

Canadian citizen Ahmad El Maati endured the horror of Egypt’s Mukhabarat (intelligence services) and their detention centres. He was detained and tortured there because of unsubstantiated allegations made by Canada’s spy agency, CSIS, which also supplied the questions to his interrogators (I wonder how CSIS is feeling about potentially losing those thugs as allies?).

So, to help us all understand just what “breaking through the fear barrier” means in Egypt here’s an excerpt from my book about Ahmad’s experience in one of the Mukhabarat’s detention centres, the Mabahith Amn al-Dawla al-’Ulya (State Security Investigations services) headquarters, in the heart of Cairo.

I’ll be hosting the fifth broadcast of Rights and Security on Prism TV this Saturday November 13 at 11:00am EST. This special edition will be broadcast from the headquarters of Amnesty International Canada. I’ll be joined by Amnesty International’s Alex Neve, Amir Attaran from the University of Ottawa’s law school, the Globe and Mail’s Paul Koring, and Dennis Edney, Khadr’s Canadian lawyer, as well as a focus group of 15 expert human rights activists, lawyers, academics, politicians and former public service workers. You can read more about it here, and watch live here.

The October 23 edition of Prism TV’s Rights and Security can be viewed here. I interviewed Sophie Harkat, Matt Webber and Paul Cavalluzzo on security certificates.

I’ll be hosting another edition of Prism TV’s Rights and Security this Saturday at 10am EST. The focus: Security Certificates: Past, present and future. The guests: Special Advocate and former lead council to the Arar Commission, Paul Cavalluzzo; Sophie Harkat, wife of security certificate detainee Mohamed Harkat; and Mathew Webber, one of Mr. Harkat’s counsel. You can read more about the show here and tune in to watch here.

I hope you’ll tune in this Saturday for Prism TV’s online discussion about the role of leaks in national security investigations. I’ll be hosting the show and talking with Jeff Sallot from Carleton University’s Journalism program, former RCMP Public Complaints Commissioner Shirley Heafey, and former CSIS analyst Michel Juneau -Katsuya. Prism TV is part of Prism Magazine, an online magazine published by Maher Arar. Tune in here at 1:00 p.m. EST this Saturday, September 25 to watch. Click here for more on the show.

Mark Larsen, a PhD candidate at York University, has written a review of Dark Days for the academic journal for which he is a co-managing editor — the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons (Volume 19, Number 2). That review is now available on line here.

Prominent Syrian human rights lawyer and activist Haitham Al-Maleh turned 80 on Sunday — in very poor health and in a Syrian detention centre.

I first heard about al-Maleh when I was working on Maher Arar’s case back in 2003, and he was doing all he could do to help. Arar’s was an unusual case — the world’s media doesn’t usually pay much attention to political detainees in Syria.

Years later I phoned al-Maleh to interview him for my book. I remember being surprised by how upbeat, funny and friendly he was.

And courageous.

When I asked if he was worried about the consequences of talking with me on the phone he laughed — a genuine belly laugh — he apparently found it amusing that I thought he would consider not speaking out. It’s just what he has always done, he said.

He explained to me how the human rights situation had worsened since Western nations had used Syrian authorities to torture their terror suspects. Syrian authorities, apparently emboldened by this nod of approval for their torture tactics, were cracking down on human rights defenders, and having to expand detention centres in order to accommodate an influx of new political prisoners.

When I spoke with al-Maleh he was barred from leaving the country. Now he’s suffering much harsher consequences of Syria’s deteriorating human rights conditions.

Arbitrarily detained (ie. kidnapped) by Syrian authorities last October, Al-Maleh was sentenced to three years this July for criticizing Syrian officials, their control over the judicial system and their continued use of emergency laws. Or, as Syrian authorities put it: “publishing false information that could weaken national morale.”

As al-Maleh has often pointed out himself, Syrian authorities regularly use vaguely worded charges like these to detain, prosecute and silence their critics.

His detention and the sentence have been condemned by human rights groups in Syria and around the world.

Al-Maleh, a diabetic with with other health issues, was denied his medicine when first detained. His health has deteriorated in poor detention conditions. And like all those detained in Syria, he remains at constant risk of mistreatment and torture.

So I’m going to mark Haitham al-Maleh’s birthday by writing to the Syrian president and adding my voice to the many calling for his unconditional and immediate release.

You can too. For more information see this August 13 report from Human Rights Watch, and what the International Federation for Human Rights and Amnesty International had to say about al-Maleh’s sentence. For who to write to where, see this urgent action from Amnesty International.

I’ve received a number of inquiries about the Arar Commission web site — which used to be consistently available on the Library and Archives Canada site by clicking on the old URL — www.ararcommission.ca. Now, click on that, and you get some strange financial services company…

I contacted Library and Archives about this, and they are looking into what’s happened to their archived links and the URL. In the meantime, they were able to find the archived site, and all the Inquiry’s reports, recommendations, transcripts and other documents on the Privy Council Office web site here.

As today’s Globe and Mail editorial points out, the new Royal Canadian Mounted Police Review and Complaints Commission created by Act C-38 falls far short of what Arar Inquiry Commissioner Dennis O’Connor recommended back in December 2006.

Note to readers: I am looking into why the Arar Commission’s web site seems to be no longer available on the National Archives site. In the meantime, click here for a pdf of the Arar Commission’s report and recommendations on oversight.

If he were, we might be able to believe that he’s been holding back on issuing a formal apology to Maher Arar — as called for by the New York Times on the day Obama came to Canada — because the case was before the courts.

If he were, he’d read today’s decision by the US Supreme Court and immediately move to ensure his administration public takes responsibility for its role in sending Arar to be tortured, and invite him to the White House for a formal and public in-person apology.

And if he were, he’d use the occasion to announce the launch of a full-scale independent and public inquiry into all the other Arars — into the role the CIA and FBI and other US agencies have been, and still are playing, in the rendition, detention and torture of so many others since 9/11.

I, for one, won’t be holding my breath.